In the construction of buildings including commercial buildings, homes, etc. crown molding is installed at the juncture of the walls and ceilings to form a decorative, pleasing finish for the building. When the walls of the building are straight, integral crown molding may be utilized quite successfully. In more elaborate building structures, such as those having convex or concave curved wall surfaces, integral crown molding cannot be applied in a single length. Since crown mold is applied 30.degree.+ angular to wall surface, on a concave wall the edge touching the wall would have a considerably longer run than the edge touching the ceiling. Since wood has virtually no ability to stretch and only minute compression properties, the angular nature of its application precludes installation of straight pieces in a single length on a curved wall. Where curved wall surfaces are involved it is necessary to utilize crown molding that closely fits the curvature of the wall surface. A conventional method for installing curved crown molding is to assemble multiple short pieces of straight crown molding in end-to-end relation. Since this method of installation leaves multiple angulated joints, in order to achieve a smoothly curved surface configuration, a filler material is utilized to float in the various angulated joints that are created. A joint filling and floating operation of this nature is quite expensive because of the number of cuts that are made in the molding strip in order to adequately conform to the curvature of the wall surface. Considerable manual effort is required in order to fill, float and sand the various angulated joints and since the multiple pieces are in an angular end relation none of the lines characteristic to the mold are in a curved form to provide screed lines for floating. The resulting reality is a situation where a truly curved contour is impossible to achieve. A problem also occurs during temperature changes. Since wood and plaster filler material expand and contract differently in response to temperature changes and changes in humidity the plaster material will quite readily crack, giving the finished molding an undesirable appearance and requiring repair operations.
Another appraoch for developing curved crown moldings is to preform the crown molding to the desired radius of the wall surface to which the crown molding is to be applied. This is a very expensive procedure and is not generally satisfactory because the wall itself seldom is installed to the exact radius to which it is designed. In other words, prefabricated curved molding in most cases does not fit the intended wall surface and therefore expensive adjustments must be made in order to render them satisfactory. Such prefabricated molding is exceedingly expensive because it is usually milled from large wood pieces and there is significant waste involved. Since this method involves cutting curves out of straight logs, the grain direction dictates the length of pieces supplied. This causes there to be through butt-joints every 4 to 8 feet in crown mold. In addition, milling these logs in cross-grain manner causes the grain to raise up and produce a texture impossible to sand out, and thus showing through the paint.